Ogden's rules of grammar for Basic English allows people to use the 850 words to talk about things and events in the normal English way.
- Words are pluralised by adding an ~s on the end of the word. If there are special ways to make a plural word in English, such as ~es and ~ies, they should be used instead.
- Words like change, turn, and use are used as verbs, but the 300 of them may be turned into different forms by adding the ending ~er or ~ing; or into adjectives by adding ~ing and ~ed. Only act is to be turned into actor rather than acter.
- Some adjectives can be turned into adverbs with the ending ~ly.
- For comparatives and superlatives, either more and most or ~er and ~est may be used.
- Some adjectives can be inverted with un~.
- Yes/no questions are formed by adding do at the beginning or changing the word order.
- Operators and pronouns conjugate as in normal English.
- Combined words can be formed from two operators (for example become), from two nouns (for example newspaper or headline) or from a noun and a direction (sundown).
- Measures, numbers, money, months, days, years, clock time, and international words are in English forms.
- The wordlist can be augmented by the jargon of an industry or science. For example, in a grammar, words such as grammar or noun might be used, even though they are not on Ogden's wordlist.
